Season 3: The Empire of Friends Blog 18: Play Another Song

 Play Another Song

About a year ago, I mentioned that my goal was to get my driver's license. Shortly after introducing you to this goal, I made my first step towards achieving it by getting my temps. I mostly practiced driving by going to and from work, and because my parents were so busy with their art studio, we didn't practice much more than that. When Covid-19 hit, I still didn't do a lot of driving because there wasn't anywhere I needed to go during the lockdown.

When the lockdown ended, my parents became busy with the studio again. In July, I knew I had to make practicing for the drivers test my priority because my temps would expire on 11/15/2020. Because of Mom and Dad's busy schedule, I asked my grandpa, who we call Papa, if he could take me to practice. My first few times in the car with Papa, we only drove around Clintonville, the community where I live. We only started working on maneuverability at the beginning of September.

At the same time, I had a meeting with my counselor. I told her that I hadn't scheduled my driving test because I still had two months before my temps expired. I was also just about to start practicing maneuverability. She told me that I should probably schedule it sooner rather than later because the BMV has been busy due to the lockdown. I scheduled my test for 10/21/2020, and Papa and I spent all of our time practicing maneuverability.

The Ohio maneuverability test is set up as follows: Two cones are placed parallel to each other nine feet apart. Two more cones are put in the same position, 20 feet behind the first two. A fifth cone is centered another 20 feet away from the second two. To pass the test's maneuverability portion, a driver has to pull up to the first two cones and line up front bumper the car with them. The driver must then look both ways and drive between all four cones without hitting any of the cones. Depending on the instructor's direction, the driver must turn right or left at the fifth cone, straighten the car up and stop with the back bumper lined up with the cone. After that, all the driver has to do is reverse back through the cones, again without hitting them.

Pulling through the cones wasn't as much of a problem for me as reversing through them was! My first time practicing, it took me about an hour and 50 minutes out of two hours to get a streak of successful times going. My second time practicing, everything was going perfectly until about 20 minutes in, I hit a cone and started doubting myself. As my mental state deteriorated over the next hour and 40 minutes, I gradually hit more cones.  

The third practice went very similarly to the second except toward the end of the two hours when my doubt was at its peak; Papa told me to turn the car off come over to him. He asked me what was wrong, and I talked him through everything that was going on.

Papa sat, I thought for a second and then said, "You know what you should do! You should imagine the cones as people!"

"Yeah, cuz that’s gonna help with the stress!" I replied sarcastically.

"I'm serious!" He replied. "Think about it, what do you do when you have a song stuck in your head?"

"You play another song," I answered.

"Exactly!" Papa exclaimed. "Right now you're overthinking, but if you focus on making the cones people it would distract you you'll be overthinking more about that than the fact that this is practice for a test!"

I got back in the car and imagined cones one and two as August and Arden, cones three and four as Aspen and Kid, and cone five as Marshall. When we practiced for a fourth time a few days later, I only "killed" Aspen once over the entire two hours! Quite honestly, over the remaining practices, Aspen was the hardest to keep "alive," but I eventually managed it.

In my original plan for this installment, this last paragraph was going to be about the test itself. Honestly, however, there's not enough content for me to write regarding it. The only thing you need to know is something you probably already figured out —I passed!!! I'm so excited to finally have my license and I can't wait to see the new possibilities that this opens up!

Have a Greattastic Day, and Be Safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

Season 3: The Empire of Friends: Blog 17: More Years Lost

 More Years Lost

    Eleven years ago today (10/15/2020) started the worst week of my life. On this day in 2009, my best friend Samantha McCarthy, who I lovingly refer to as S.M, passed away after a long battle with a rare blood disorder called Fanconi Anemia. I haven't talked about S.M. recently because all of the Sam's Fans events that I would be heavily involved with were all moved online due to COVID-19. For those of you who don't know, Sam's Fans is a nonprofit organization that raises money to support music and art therapy in Ohio hospitals, founded by S.M's mom, Nikki! I make an effort to go to her grave two times a year; once on her birthday, March 15th, and once on the anniversary of her “heavenly” birthday, October 15. This year, S.M's birthday landed on the weekend, just when the quarantine started. I could not go on March 15th, so I made an extreme effort to go today.

I got into the driver's seat, and Mom and got into the passenger seat with the flowers I had bought yesterday. When we got into the cemetery, I drove to St. Elizabeth's lot, and Mom and I got out of the car. As I put the flowers on her grave, I started to think about the problems I have with this day:

    I didn't find out that S.M. had passed away until the morning after. When Mom and Dad told me, I didn't completely believe them. Not that I thought they were lying to me about it, but when you are told about the death of someone you love, it takes a while for your emotions to catch up to the facts- at least that's how it worked for me. It took me until the night of the viewing to realize that S.M. was gone. Standing in the funeral home with her family and friends made me face the reality of the situation. From that point on, I considered October 15th the worst day of the year. Even after I started acknowledging my grief and reconnected with S.M's family and joined Sam's Fans, October 15th was still a day that I did not enjoy. That remained true, until last year.  

    My birthday is on August 19th. As a present last year, Mom and Dad bought me an airline ticket to visit my "sister" Arden, that September. I stayed with Arden for two weeks, and one night we went out for dinner. Over dinner, we started to have a deep conversation, as I typically do with Arden. It happened to be about S.M. and some lingering grief. Arden gave me the best advice that she could, and I wrote a blog about it. Unfortunately, sometimes the English language fails to describe emotions correctly, which was one of those times. I wasn't accurately explaining to Arden what I was going through. As a result, the advice she gave me was partially incomplete. Luckily S.M’s mom, Nikki read the blog I wrote, and she filled in the gaps with what I was trying to say and added onto Arden's advice. Arden and Nikki's joint advice helped me finally accept everything that had happened after nearly ten years.

    

    As the 10th anniversary approached a month later, I wasn't feeling as bad as I usually did. I'm not complaining, I took it as a good sign, but I didn't think it would last, especially not this year. S.M. was 11 years old when she died. In Nikki's own words from today on, "we will forever be going in the direction of more years lost than what we had." I guess what I'm saying is even though I am as okay as I am ever going to be with this, I feel guilty for not being as sad as I used to feel on this anniversary. Especially this year because it is such a monumental moment. But I know S.M. doesn't want me to be sad; that's not the kind of person she was. She was one of the most positive people I have ever met. So for all of the people who knew her, do not be sad. Instead, spread positivity because that's what keeps her spirit alive! Every time you make someone smile, or laugh, or help them work through something, you are doing what she would have done.

Have a Greattastic day and be safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri

You can find more information about Sam's Fans at www.samsfans.org or by following them on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @samsfans15!

Season 3: The Empire of Friends Blog 16: Flat Earthers Got Nothing On Us

 Flat Earthers Got Nothing On Us

August’s 24 birthday was on 9/29/2020. Originally Arden, Marshall, and I planned to surprise August, Aspen, and Kid by having Arden fly in from Colorado for her birthday. The plan was for Arden to fly in on the 24th and then we would hike the Smoky Mountains on the weekend. The problem was that August had to have surgery to get some hardware removed from her arm. She had a sledding accident a few years ago and recently it had started causing problems. The reason she had to get her surgery directly before her birthday was that on 10/6/2020 August will be moving to Pittsburgh. As a result of the surgery we had to keep the weekend pretty low-key, and just by sheer coincidence, everybody found out about the surprise.

Upon hearing about Arden's return for the weekend, Ben, August’s boyfriend decided to come to town from Pittsburgh to celebrate as well. We had an amazing weekend and did a ton of insane stuff. However, the thing I'm going to focus on now is an argument that pinned August and me against Arden and Aspen!

It started when we were all sitting around the kitchen table talking about small hikes in the area. Someone made a comment about Aspen not being an outdoorsy person. Her defense was that it wasn't that she wasn't outdoorsy it was just that she didn't like Ohio’s spin on nature because it's all the same.

“Well, all nature is the same,” I replied.

“What? No, it's not. Is a hill the same as a mountain?” Aspen retorted.

“Yes, they are!” I said matter-of-factly. “Generally speaking, both are mounds of earth that build to the sky. The difference is one is bigger than the other!”

Aspen and I went back and forth, escalating the conversation with each word until we started talking about the ocean. Aspen said that the ocean is different from the rest of nature and I said, “The ocean is not part of the earth though!”

“Yes, it is!” Arden and Aspen exclaimed.

“Guys,” I explained, “If you take water off of the Earth it's just the crust! The water is on top of the earth!”

 I will admit, while I was arguing my point, it was not as clear as it was in the quote above. It is clearer here because I’ve had a week to think about this. Even though I wasn't saying exactly what I wanted to say, August still understood my point and took my side. We spent about 15 minutes arguing back and forth before August, abandoned me because she got tired of fighting!

Without August to back me up, the other two won the argument, at least that is until Arden knocked a cup of water onto the kitchen floor. “See!” I proclaimed pointing to the water on the floor, “The water is on top of the floor!” This reignited the fight and after about five more minutes we figured out that we were saying the same thing, We were just defining what the word “Earth” meant differently.

Arden and Aspen were talking about the Earth as an ecosystem and August and I were strictly talking about the globe. After a week of not trying to think about this incident, I realized how this argument serves as a great depiction of autism. When talking to people on the spectrum, sometimes if what they are saying doesn't make sense at first, it could be exactly what you are thinking!

Have A Greattastic Day And Be safe!

J. Mitchie Ulibarri